1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an imaging apparatus and an image processing method.
Priority is claimed on Japanese Patent Application No. 2004-193142, filed Jun. 30, 2004, the content of which is incorporated herein by reference.
2. Description of Related Art
As a conventional image transformation processing technique, a morphing method is known, which is used for generating an animation image in computer graphics. In the morphing method, a still image A is associated with another still image B, and feature points are identified in each still image, and transition from the feature points of the still image A to the feature points of the still image B over a period of time is estimated. Coordinates or color data for the transition route are then determined, thereby generating animation image data for an animation, or extracting a still image in the route of the transition, as a transformed image from the original image.
The above morphing method may be applied to a digital camera, that is, an image created by user's photographing operation may be processed by the morphing method so as to obtain a transformed image. Generally, such a digital camera has a liquid crystal panel (i.e., display) for a photographer to confirm a subject to be photographed, and a marking (line) is also shown on the display in addition to the subject. For example, when a contour of the upper half of a human's body is displayed as a marking line and the photographer photographs a human as the subject while adjusting the human's upper half to the marking line, feature points for morphing can be easily determined in the created subject's image as the original image for morphing.
In addition, recently, cellular (or mobile) phones having built-in digital cameras have become wide spread, and photographing can be easily enjoyed, for example, by photographing a human face by using a cellular phone (see Japanese Unexamined Patent Application, First Publication No. 2002-300454).
However, in the conventional morphing process using a marking, detailed requests from users for morphing cannot be satisfied. For example, in the morphing process after photographing a human's face, there is a variety of users' requests such as a request to subject only a specific part such as the eyes, the mouth, or the nose to the morphing process, or a request to subject only specific parts such as the eyes and the mouth to the morphing process. That is, there are various requests for partial morphing of a subject, which are not sufficiently implemented by conventional techniques.